5 ms·

It seems that as interesting as Forth is, the community of such languages is very niche and small, even smaller than Lisp. Can anyone speak to recent changes in

It seems that as interesting as Forth is, the community of such languages is very niche and small, even smaller than Lisp. Can anyone speak to recent changes in velocity or energy?

openfuture 5y ago
I don't think forth has a smaller community than lisp just a less web-friendly one. Lots of embedded people. Lisp is top down, forth is bottom up.
- catketch 5y ago
  What would you call HP’s RPL then :)
  - openfuture 5y ago
    A lattice? (But touché :)
PaulHoule 5y ago
Who cares? If you need some minimal programming language with some special characteristics, you can write a FORTH in 2k lines of assembler or so. The first time I used 32 bit ints on an 8 bit computer was in a FORTH that implemented 32 bit math, for instance.
- protomyth 5y ago
  Because of the original 128K Mac's limited memory, FORTH was one of the first actually useful language you could host on it.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    The 128K Mac had a lot more memory than most other computers in 1984, but it was not a lot of room to fit a GUI in. Oddly, within a few years people had shoehorned GUIs into much smaller machines, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)
    - protomyth 5y ago
      The 128K Mac had a lot more memory than most other computers in 1984 They very issue where Byte shows the Macintosh had a lot of computer ads with PC's starting at 128K and being expandable to 512K or 640K. The Macintosh was under specified in memory compared to non-GUI PCs of its era.
haolez 5y ago
Forth has almost no syntax, which leads to every project becoming some kind of domain specific DSL. This is not necessarily a problem, but it leaves Forth without a strong sense of identity as a programming language. This is my opinion, of course.
- macintux 5y ago
  Presumably that’s compounded by the fact that the inventor, Chuck Moore, feels strongly that Forth is more of a concept to be reimplemented for each project, customized along with the hardware, than a programming language to be standardized.
  - throwaway17_17 5y ago
    Moore’s talks and quotes of his from various lecture notes on this point really inspired the underlying theory of my personal programming language. I wanted something that I could adapt to different use cases when I saw fit, but with a solid underlying theoretical base. I have been using it for my personal work for about 8 months now (compiling to JS, C or C++ depending on project) and I’m enjoying it greatly as well as being productive.
    - macintux 5y ago
      Do you have a blog post about your language? If not, you should write one.
      - throwaway17_17 5y ago
        I don’t at this point. I have been playing around with the idea of a release or something similar. But people tend to expect a lot when a new language is shown. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in just reading about the language and then not even being able to use some light playground or anything. I have been considering doing an Ask HN to see what people felt should be included on an initial ‘release’ or showing of a language. Maybe I should.
Syzygies 5y ago
The Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) is terse but matches what I've read elsewhere over the years: Forth is both easy to implement and yields very compact binaries, so it has been favored as the first environment implemented on new hardware, and as the controller for satellites. This has become less important as resource constraints ease. Forth's progeny PostScript continues unabated. Humans tend not to code directly in PDF format, as that is grave-digging. The "specification" has many geological layers (the earliest are easiest to code in) and no verification or even machine-readable definition, so one is at the mercy of testing PDF files with multiple applications. All the problems associated with Markdown, only on steroids. But one can easily write code that generates valid PostScript, and have the results translated to PDF.
colllectorof 5y ago
https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/ One of the most impressive languages you've never heard about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g
ww520 5y ago
There's something very practical about postfix and stack based languages like Forth - compactness and simplicity. Just couple weeks ago I had the need to build a small language with the requirement of terse and compact syntax. I settled on a Forth-like stack based language and was able to build the parser, compiler, and code gen to GPU in about 80 lines of JS code in a short time.

It seems that as interesting as Forth is, the community of such languages is very niche and small, even smaller than Lisp. Can anyone speak to recent changes in velocity or energy?

openfuture 5y ago

I don't think forth has a smaller community than lisp just a less web-friendly one. Lots of embedded people. Lisp is top down, forth is bottom up.

catketch 5y ago
What would you call HP’s RPL then :)
- openfuture 5y ago
  A lattice? (But touché :)

PaulHoule 5y ago

Who cares? If you need some minimal programming language with some special characteristics, you can write a FORTH in 2k lines of assembler or so. The first time I used 32 bit ints on an 8 bit computer was in a FORTH that implemented 32 bit math, for instance.

protomyth 5y ago
Because of the original 128K Mac's limited memory, FORTH was one of the first actually useful language you could host on it.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  The 128K Mac had a lot more memory than most other computers in 1984, but it was not a lot of room to fit a GUI in. Oddly, within a few years people had shoehorned GUIs into much smaller machines, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)
  - protomyth 5y ago
    The 128K Mac had a lot more memory than most other computers in 1984 They very issue where Byte shows the Macintosh had a lot of computer ads with PC's starting at 128K and being expandable to 512K or 640K. The Macintosh was under specified in memory compared to non-GUI PCs of its era.

haolez 5y ago

Forth has almost no syntax, which leads to every project becoming some kind of domain specific DSL. This is not necessarily a problem, but it leaves Forth without a strong sense of identity as a programming language. This is my opinion, of course.

macintux 5y ago
Presumably that’s compounded by the fact that the inventor, Chuck Moore, feels strongly that Forth is more of a concept to be reimplemented for each project, customized along with the hardware, than a programming language to be standardized.
- throwaway17_17 5y ago
  Moore’s talks and quotes of his from various lecture notes on this point really inspired the underlying theory of my personal programming language. I wanted something that I could adapt to different use cases when I saw fit, but with a solid underlying theoretical base. I have been using it for my personal work for about 8 months now (compiling to JS, C or C++ depending on project) and I’m enjoying it greatly as well as being productive.
  - macintux 5y ago
    Do you have a blog post about your language? If not, you should write one.
    - throwaway17_17 5y ago
      I don’t at this point. I have been playing around with the idea of a release or something similar. But people tend to expect a lot when a new language is shown. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in just reading about the language and then not even being able to use some light playground or anything. I have been considering doing an Ask HN to see what people felt should be included on an initial ‘release’ or showing of a language. Maybe I should.

Syzygies 5y ago

The Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language) is terse but matches what I've read elsewhere over the years: Forth is both easy to implement and yields very compact binaries, so it has been favored as the first environment implemented on new hardware, and as the controller for satellites. This has become less important as resource constraints ease. Forth's progeny PostScript continues unabated. Humans tend not to code directly in PDF format, as that is grave-digging. The "specification" has many geological layers (the earliest are easiest to code in) and no verification or even machine-readable definition, so one is at the mercy of testing PDF files with multiple applications. All the problems associated with Markdown, only on steroids. But one can easily write code that generates valid PostScript, and have the results translated to PDF.

colllectorof 5y ago

https://factorcode.org/ https://factorcode.org/ One of the most impressive languages you've never heard about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_0QlhYlS8g

ww520 5y ago

There's something very practical about postfix and stack based languages like Forth - compactness and simplicity. Just couple weeks ago I had the need to build a small language with the requirement of terse and compact syntax. I settled on a Forth-like stack based language and was able to build the parser, compiler, and code gen to GPU in about 80 lines of JS code in a short time.